Property Value

When this property is set to true, 100-Continue behavior is used. Client requests that use the PUT and POST methods will add an Expect header to the request if the Expect100Continue property is true and ContentLength property is greater than zero or the SendChunked property is true. The client will expect to receive a 100-Continue response from the server to indicate that the client should send the data to be posted. This mechanism allows clients to avoid sending large amounts of data over the network when the server, based on the request headers, intends to reject the request.

For example, assume the Expect100Continue property is false. When the request is sent to the server, it includes the data. If, after reading the request headers, the server requires authentication and must send a 401 response, the client must resend the data with proper authentication headers.

If this property is true, the request headers are sent to the server. If the server has not rejected the request, it sends a 100-Continue response signaling that the data can be transmitted. If, as in the preceding example, the server requires authentication, it sends the 401 response and the client has not unnecessarily transmitted the data.

Changing the value of this property does not affect existing ServicePoint objects. Only new ServicePoint objects created after the change are affected.

The 100-Continue behavior is not used for HTTP 1.0 requests even if this property is set to true.

The Expect 100-Continue behavior is fully described in IETF RFC 2616 Section 10.1.1.